Moral Values Debate

I had a conversation with a liberal friend the other day over the supposed influence of "moral values" in the election and why voters who cited moral values as a major issue voted for Bush over Kerry. My friend commented that liberals have superior moral values and did not understand why moral values such as traditional marriage and abortion would have such an influence. The ideas that he called moral values were really leftist equality arguments such as all people having healthy food to eat or having the dignity of a meaningful education or equality in health care.

I responded that I did not think his values were the kind of moral values most people consider to be moral values. In my opinion, personal character traits such as being honest, paying back your debts, and the belief that some truths are absolute are perhaps the types of values people subconsciously identify as moral values. On the other hand, public policies, such as gay marriage and abortion are not moral values. Instead, such policies are reflections on the state of personal moral values (mentioned above) in our civilization. The decay of these moral values is reflected predominantly in liberal rationalization of relativism...Put one way, "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter... or perhaps using the same logic.. "one man's abortionist is another man's freedom fighter."

Can the Democratic party really hope to survive if they continue to believe that "moral values" equate to leftist ideological positions?